Thief (37 page)

She would be better off without him he thought, for as a mere human he could only bring her down. But he knew he didn’t have the strength to break it off with her, even if he had wanted to. Nor he knew, did she. Nor did they want to. It was merely something they had to live with. He simply had to make his time with her, however long or short, the best that he could.

Others broke into their sorrow, for there should be no pain in heaven, and they tended for Sherial as she cried, while for him the universe went dark. He knew he was slipping into unconsciousness, his only remaining defence against the power and glory of the choir. And as the welcoming darkness enfolded him, he only asked for them to comfort Sherial.

Hours later he awoke once more, lying on the cool green grass. How long had he lain there he wondered, feeling the warm sun beginning to set on his back? It had seemed like only minutes, but surely lasted nearly the entire day.

He forced his cold, tired and stiff muscles to return to life, and dragged himself back to his knees, wondering at the unusual silence.

Where were the others, he wondered? Had they too somehow been caught up in this tidal wave of emotion? Somehow he doubted it. Were they then still walking towards their rendezvous with their equipment? That too seemed unlikely. Surely the angels wouldn’t have left it more than a few miles away. Far more likely he decided, they were playing with it. Testing it out, seeing what damage they could do.

Even as he thought it, a whoosh grabbed his attention, and he watched a witch shoot past on a broomstick, tailed closely by a space aged fighter plane. Distant yowls came to his ears and he knew more animals too had joined their cause. The joy as the others played was infectious, and rising he laughed out loud. For the first time in ages, things were actually going according to plan. He just hoped it was his.

As he rose, beside him he found the artefacts. Mechanical things, mystical things, indescribable things, an entire junk shop of curios - all he knew, in some way brought to help him. These were the protective devices he had asked for. The products of hundreds, perhaps thousands of worlds, each with their own distinct understanding of the universe. Some would hopefully protect him against the weapons of those worlds, weapons that the demons were sure to have and use. Others perhaps would help him to hide, while some might help him to open locked doors, or confuse. None were weapons, for angels didn’t believe in violence.

He reached for the closest, a glowing sphere of light and found to his surprise it had no substance at all. It was just light. Even as he reached for it, it in turn seemed to reach for him, and in an instant he divined its purpose. It would protect him against particular types of weapons simply by being on his person. He accepted it gratefully, and in an instant it was gone, its light merging somehow with his own atoms.

He reached for the next, an amulet of some sort, and grasped immediately that if he should wear it around his neck, it would grant him some form of invisibility, though whether to people or to detection devices he wasn’t sure.

And so it went on. As he touched or even reached for any of the devices they in turn told him what they did, what they were, and he accepted them to him. In many cases he found he didn’t even have the concepts to understand what forces they used, what knowledge they were based on, but it wasn’t important. All he had to know was that they would protect him, or conceal him, the two things he had asked the angels for.

He wondered idly, what other things some of the gifts might do, knowing that the gifts the host had brought him were based on their own advanced understanding of what he would face, an understanding greater than his own. But he also trusted them. He would find out, maybe, and it would all work out perfectly. The angels and the titans would have done a marvellous job.

By the end of that time, night had fallen, and he found himself so weighed down by the assorted artefacts that he could barely stand. Sherial was still distant, lost in her pain, and once more he sent her his love and a message of hope. But he wouldn’t intrude on her grief, knowing sadly it was for her to come to terms with. He could not help her, though it hurt him to admit it. He could only love her, and hope.

Standing, he discovered the workshop, his workshop, a mere twenty or so meters behind him, and staggered towards it. But instead of being an underground complex, his workshop was now above ground, though an awful lot of the earth surrounding them had come with them, to make up the walls and ceilings. He had visions of his home, or at least his gardens and gym collapsing into a giant crater left by their removal, though somehow he suspected the titan would have thought of that. He hoped so.

Walking in through a doorway, which an underground tunnel would have led to had he been in his own home, he reached instinctively for the light switch and in surprise found it working. Electric light filled the room, illuminating his benches and piles of equipment. How Atal had achieved that minor miracle he had no idea, but he didn’t care. He was grateful.

Briefly he was overwhelmed by the sense of the familiar as he surveyed his main workshop. Everything was exactly as he remembered it, exactly as he had left it so many months before. It was a part of his home, and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to simply sink into his chair and pretend that nothing outside this room existed. But only for a moment. For in a very real way he understood he had always been home. His home was his work wherever that might be, and he had work to do.

If there was light then there was surely also power he guessed, and even as the thought crossed his mind he powered up the computer. Sure enough, he had his entire network there with him, and its thousand and one databases and libraries lay at his fingertips. Here he had the facilities to make use of these gifts. To turn them into the tools of his trade. For that was what he did best, taking other people’s technologies and using them for his own ends.

He flexed his hands, cracking the knuckles loudly in the quiet night. It was, he realized, going to be a long night. Probably a long week. A week such as a thief like him could only dream of.

It was like an electrical storm raging through his body, bolts of lightning firing randomly in all directions, and yet despite the chaos, noise and confusion there was also a certain order there. As though each and every lightning strike was in harmony with everything else.  Mostly. He watched rather than felt it.

“Watch and feel.” Abrax was talking to him, mind to mind through Sherial and Sabrina, the big lug’s own guardian angel, and he knew both of them were streets ahead of him in understanding the wild man. But he did as he was told, trusting in their knowledge and goodness.

He watched the show, trying to understand. The lightening blasts must have been his nerve impulses, travelling to and from his muscles, yet he saw nothing that looked like a cell, or anything else his biology teachers had ever told him of. Instead, they were simply blasts of pure energy, running through a diffuse pinkness, - his flesh?

“Iss strong, no. Iss basics of life.” Instinctively he felt the wrongness of that statement, and through Sherial knew that she questioned it too. Abrax too was making again the same mistakes he and the others had, believing that the knowledge of the created could match the creator. This was the basics of biological life, not life in the sense of souls. He said nothing knowing Sabrina would doubtless explain that to the big lug. Then again, perhaps he was underestimating him. Abrax too had thrown off the brand with the others. In doing so he too had surely learned even if his language skills hadn’t improved.

“Start at start. First must see shape of life. Learn shape, then smooth it.” Even as Abrax told him what he had to look for, he saw it, or perhaps Sherial did. Either way he understood the shape of the energy flows. And yet it wasn’t a true shape. It was more a system of corridors down which the lightening flared. Most of the bolts seemed to move in distinct pathways, like cars on roads, and yet here and there the odd bolt seemed to cross the median strip, launching into oncoming traffic or out into the unknown. Neuronal misfires? Could neurons even misfire? He put the questions out of his mind, and concentrated.

Even as he concentrated on a particular flow, it seemed to strengthen, though he in no way seemed to either touch or direct it. It was more as though the energy blasts themselves felt his awareness of them and made sure they didn’t put a foot wrong.

“Are you doing that?” He asked Sherial, and yet he knew that she wasn’t, not really. Nor was he. It was instead both of them, somehow working in harmony, neither knowing where one began and the other ended, and neither one caring.

They concentrated on one flow after another, watching them change from a rush hour stampeded of confused cattle, to a more orderly progression of motorists. It was fascinating to watch, and Mikel lost all awareness of time.

Here and there they came across a kink in the flow, a right angle in a road that couldn’t be crossed except very slowly. Yet even as they found them the energy streams changed before their eyes, quickly becoming smooth curves, allowing the flow to move once more. Pinched nerves?

At last it was done, and he could feel the entire motorway system pulsing smoothly, for perhaps the first time in his entire life, no traffic jams and snarl ups holding anything back.

“Iss clear, no? Must do daily. In time be normal.”

“Am I stronger now?” He didn’t feel any different, and somehow he couldn’t believe it could be as simple as that.

“Little. Did well. Must build new flows. Takes time. Need eat well, rest well, concentrate. Always.” And on that note the session abruptly ended.

Mikel came too to find himself lying on the soft grass, alone. Behind him he heard noises and knew Abrax was already up and waiting for him. He obliged, rising to his feet and was surprised at how smoothly he did so. Normally there would be aches and pains, stiffness and the inevitable brief loss of balance as he swayed a little. This time there was none of that. He didn’t really feel stronger, just better coordinated. But he accepted it with good grace, guessing it would take many years to use all of Abrax’s knowledge.

“Now try bars.”

Mikel did as he was told, beginning with the parallel bars he’d built out of tree branches. Rising quickly to his starting position he suddenly found himself grabbed. Before he could even act a burning sensation opened up all along the outsides of his arms as he balanced on them. It was like having a knife run all the way down the long muscles.

Looking down he saw Abrax was using a small stick no larger than a pencil, with a rounded end. He was pushing that end in hard, running the length of his long muscles. Had Abrax been merely a normal man it would have hurt, but he was using his own incredible strength, pushing each and every muscle fibre until it reached the very extremity of its breaking point. Pain did not go far enough to describe what he experienced.

Mikel wasn’t given time to react. Sherial was with him even as he started to get mad, telling him this was all a part of it, the strengthening. Immediately he shelved his anger knowing she was right, and that even if she hadn’t been he would have obeyed her wishes anyway. Two more lines of pain were drawn along his body, this time along the abdominals, running from his ribs to his groin. And then more traceries across them. Dimly he realized Abrax was tracing the lines of his muscles, running their full length, making sure that not a single millimetre was left unscathed.

The torture went on. He was asked to do chin-ups and even as he began fire lines opened up along the insides of his arms and the backs of his shoulders. Squats brought fire along the long muscles of his legs while his bum burned during leg raises. It didn’t stop there. Every exercise he had ever done was used against him as muscle group after muscle group was traced in fire.

Finally he was allowed to rest, his muscles aching as though they had been put through a wringer. It was as though each and every muscle in his body had been pushed to its ultimate, and beyond.

As he lay there, flat on his back and staring up at the bright blue sky, Sherial was there with him, telling him it was all part of the plan, - his plan, and that today’s session would be over soon enough. She too had felt the pain, as it washed through both of them, and she too had accepted it as necessary.